The Turin supervisory court has rejected the request for a postponement of the sentence by clemency presented by the defense of Mario Roggero , the 72-year-old jeweler from Cuneo who was definitively sentenced to 14 years and nine months for killing two robbers and wounding a third who had attacked his jewelry store in April 2021.
The defense had primarily requested a deferral of the sentence pending President Sergio Mattarella's decision on the pardon request, and, secondarily, house arrest . The Prosecutor General's Office had denied the request.
With the rejection of the request – presented by the lawyer Stefano Marcolini – Mario Roggero therefore remains in prison .
In the order, the judges note that deferral in the event of a pardon request is a residual option, with very little case law. Indeed, it would constitute a disrespectful intrusion by the supervisory judiciary into an area that is the exclusive prerogative of the Head of State.
The order recalls that the incident remains extremely divisive, even at the level of public opinion, and that, while self-defense has been ruled out, the reaction of a person unjustly attacked cannot be measured with the precision of a pharmacist's scales . In similar situations, it is possible to hypothesize an emotional shock capable of influencing the behavior of the victim of the attack.
But the very presence of conflicting reasons leads the court to exclude any preventive intervention by the judges, leaving the decision of the President of the Republic to make any modification, total, partial or conditional, of the current situation .
The court also notes that a postponement could even prove unfavorable to Roggero if the head of state were to grant only a partial pardon: the suspended sentence would not be served and could thus delay reaching the time requirements necessary to access prison benefits.
(Unioneonline)